Bollinger

Professor Alfred Bollinger

My dear colleague and friend Alfred (“Fredi”) Bollinger past away on April 3 2015 at the age of 84 years. Fredi was a remarkable person and scientist who already in the 60th started to build up one of the first angiology units in Europe at the university hospital in Zürich. He worked together with several famous colleagues in the field of vascular diseases. One example of this is the collaboration with Eugene Standness in Seattle, with whom he developed the technique of Doppler ultrasound. In the mid 70th he introduced the technique of balloon dilatation of occluded leg arteries together with Andreas Grüntzig in Zürich. As we now know this technique has become one of the most widely used for dilating occluded vessels in almost all parts of the human body.

He was also one of the pioneers in the field of clinical microcirculation where he in the beginning of the 70th developed a technique for measuring dynamic diffusion of fluorescein in human skin microcirculation. In the mid 60th I had also started to study skin microcirculation, and developed in parallel with Fredi a unique technique for measuring blood flow in human skin capillaries in health and disease. Both of us also established a close collaboration with Marcos Intaglietta in San Diego, Ca, who helped us to optimize our techniques for use in clinical research and practice.

Since that time Fredi and I developed a very close personal relationship both privately and in the scientific community. This collaboration resulted in a book on clinical capillaroscopy that was published in 1990. After this period we both further developed our microcirculatory techniques for use in different pathological conditions, and both ended our careers in the beginning of the new millennium.

It is with great sadness that I heard that Fredi had past away, and that the angiology community has lost one of the great pioneers in this field. For me personally I have lost one of my dearest colleagues and friends of all times.

Bengt Fagrell,

Prof. emeritus in MedicineKarolinska InstitutetStockholm, Sweden

Professor Bollinger was Member of the VAS Guarantors Committee since the 1998.